Five years ago, the model CIO possessed four significant qualities. The first sounds like a clicht: The CIO needed to be a vision builder, someone who could work with executive teams to build a vision of how IT could make a competitive difference to the business. That required the will to discover not only the company's strategic thrusts but how IT can add value. As one of the survivor CIOs put it, "The day you stop working on and maintaining support for the shared vision, you're gone." In contrast, many nonsurvivors were "visionaries" and proud of it, but the business often disowned the vision when it was not shared. Said one nonsurvivor CIO: "The vision was mine and mine alone."

        Survivor CIOs also were very good at relationship building with peers and superiors, and especially with the CEO. Often the CEO had to support or drive the vision in the end; more important, perhaps, the CEO hired and fired the CIO. Nonsurvivors were not necessarily bad at building relationships; they just didn't do it or they concentrated on relationships within the IT function. Quite often, CIO casualties were worshipped by their IT staff but barely known by senior executives. Survivors, on the other hand, would get to know their peers and superiors and build trust by satisfying their IT needs and engaging them in mutual learning exercises.

        But those first two survival factors alone were insufficient. Sensitivity, or tactical judgment, was essential. CIOs couldn't be too far ahead of the rest of their organizations in their ambitions and actions in IT. Also, the CIOs had to detect when a change in organizational direction would have consequences for IT. This is about distinguishing clear messages from flavors of the month, about detecting sea changes from passing squalls.

        Those failing the sensitivity test included the CIO who resisted taking his share of budget cuts during a recession and the CIO who resisted decentralizing the IT function when the rest of the organization was being broken into smaller units.

        So far, the prescription for the model CIO of five years ago resembles that for any other senior executive. But CIOs always have had to obey one other imperative: They must be deliverers. The CIO who neither delivers what is promised nor complies with financial expectations is dead for two reasons. First, IT projects and operations are very visible, especially failed ones. And second, many business managers are concerned about IT expenditures, and overruns magnify their worst fears.

        The CIO as vision builder, relationship builder, tactician and deliverer may seem a tall order, but in the last five years another four requirements have been added, mirroring the continuing transformation in both IT and the business at large.

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